CEO Initiative

The best PR is doing good

The CEO Initiative was founded in 2016 by a group of concerned South African businesspeople who heeded the call of the then South African Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan, to assist in making a positive contribution to creating sustainable economic growth.

As part of their involvement, the CEOs created a plan to employ one million youth in order to address South Africa’s chronic youth unemployment issue. Together they devised a quality work experience program, which subsequently became known as the Youth Employment Service (YES). Newly elected South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, referred to the importance of YES in his National Budget address in February 2018, announcing that the initiative would be launched the following month.

The launch event was attended by President Cyril Ramaphosa, along with a large number of high-profile South African CEOs who were committed to the project. H+K was responsible for facilitating media engagements during and after the launch, which was covered by over 70 journalists, including international media outlets such as The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Economist and Reuters.